4/12/08

The subject is timely as it pertains to my local clients and what I see occurring in the local space in general.

Talk to any small business owner and watch their reaction when they see or hear a competitor is bidding on their name or business. Someone like Sony or Apple can send a legal team to Google's door to fight back retailers from bidding on their products. A local plumber, roofer or glass repair business doesn't have the resources or know where to start.

"...the advertisers themselves are responsible for the keywords and ad content that they choose to use. Accordingly, we encourage trademark owners to resolve their disputes directly with the advertisers, particularly because the advertisers may have similar advertisements on other sites."

So they advise the offended to talk to the offender. This is a touchy area. If your competitor has the brass to advertise using your personal or business name, effectively stealing your business, you are not in the greatest mood when you pick up the phone.

Who needs this headache?

What happens if the offending party tells the offended to blow off?

One tact is to have an attorney draw up cease and desist letter. The advertiser may simply cite Google's own Terms of Service and say too bad.

Another angle is to fight fire with fire and bid on the offenders business name, key services or products.

A simple test to determine if a competitor is bidding on your personal or business name is to search Google for all of your identifiers. If you see your competitor's bidding on your name or business service don't panic. In some cases the business may not even know they are doing it.

In my experience it's an even split between business owners and unscrupulous marketers taking advantage of the lack of a competitors understanding of the process. So put your shotgun away and call in the virtual gun.

2/15/08

Microsoft Office Live Small Business makes it easy to create a professional-looking Web site for your business. Sign up and you’ll have everything you need to get started – including free Web hosting, a custom domain name, e-mail accounts, e-commerce, and more.

*Attract Customers

Reach new customers and stay connected to existing ones

Microsoft Office Live Small Business has easy-to-use, affordable online marketing products to help get your business noticed. No long-term commitments or costly up-front fees mean you’ve got nothing to lose but potential sales opportunities.

*Manage Your Business

Stay on top of your business with simple online tools

Managing and tracking information isn’t easy when you’re busy running your business. But powerful online applications can help you organize and access sales opportunities, contacts, project schedules, documents, and more. So whether you’re in the office or on the road you can stay on top of your business."

Visitors will find slick, well produced videos offering small to medium businesses previews of their services. The videos show consultants visiting businesses that either lacked a web presence, marketing plan or sufficient technology infrastructure.

Microsoft partner consultants of course can sell you solutions to get your business on course.

I was reading Mashable this morning and noticed a sponsored add by HP pushing small business marketing. Clicked over and landed on Small Business Trends, an SMB marketing blog operated by Anita Campbell.

The site is a success judging by the amount of readers (137k) and all the comments or suggestions posted on the tips page by celebrated personalities in the online marketing realm.

The tips page sponsorship by HP is smart, marketing on a marketers site. They expose readers to HP computers, office supplies, copies etc.

I'm not a fan of full site or even dedicated special event page sponsorship. I understand the idea from HP's point of view however when a site is 'owned' by a particular brand objectivity is automatically questioned.

If this site was fully sponsored by someone like Idearc's Superpages I would not be able to point my clients to advantages offered by competitors.

Once I take a dedicated sponsorship I become a blogger for them, not an objective agent for my clients.

About This Blog

These pages serve in support of Sierra Web Marketing, a one-stop search marketing shop for local business.New tools and tactics for marketing small business come available almost daily. For the benefit of our clients we follow and study trends in social media marketing, search engine marketing, site optimization and hyper-local user generated content sites.